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Islamic Fundamentalism and the Sex
Slave Trade in Iran
Donna M. Hughes
Professor & Carlson Endowed Chair
Women's Studies Program
University of Rhode Island
A measure of Islamic fundamentalists success in controlling society is
the depth and totality with which they suppress the freedom and rights
of women.
In Iran for 25 years, the ruling mullahs have enforced humiliating and
sadistic rules and punishments on women and girls, enslaving them in a
gender apartheid system of segregation, forced veiling, second-class
status, lashing, and stoning to death.
Joining a global trend, the fundamentalists have added another way to
dehumanize women and girls: buying and selling them for prostitution.
Exact numbers of victims are impossible to obtain, but according to an
official source in Tehran, there has been a 635 percent increase in the
number of teenage girls in prostitution. The magnitude of this statistic
conveys how rapidly this form of abuse has grown. In Tehran, there are
an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on
the streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in
the city. The trade is also international: thousands of Iranian women
and girls have been sold into sexual slavery abroad.
The head of Iran's Interpol bureau believes that the sex slave trade is
one of the most profitable activities in Iran today. This criminal trade
is not conducted outside the knowledge and participation of the ruling
fundamentalists. Government officials themselves are involved in buying,
selling, and sexually abusing women and girls.
Many of the girls come from impoverished rural areas. Drug addiction is
epidemic throughout Iran, and some addicted parents sell their children
to support their habits. High unemployment 28 percent for youth 15-29
years of age and 43 percent for women 15-20 years of age ‑ is a serious
factor in driving restless youth to accept risky offers for work. Slave
traders take advantage of any opportunity in which women and children
are vulnerable. For example, following the recent earthquake in Bam,
orphaned girls have been kidnapped and taken to a known slave market in
Tehran where Iranian and foreign traders meet.
Popular destinations for victims of the slave trade are the Arab
countries in the Persian Gulf. According to the head of the Tehran
province judiciary, traffickers target girls between 13 and 17, although
there are reports of some girls as young as 8 and 10, to send to Arab
countries. One ring was discovered after an 18 year-old girl escaped
from a basement where a group of girls were held before being sent to
Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The number of Iranian women
and girls who are deported from Persian Gulf countries indicates the
magnitude of the trade. Upon their return to Iran, the Islamic
fundamentalists blame the victims, and often physically punish and
imprison them. The women are examined to determine if they have engaged
in "immoral activity." Based on the findings, officials can ban them
from leaving the country again.
Police have uncovered a number of prostitution and slavery rings
operating from Tehran that have sold girls to France, Britain, Turkey,
as well. One network based in Turkey bought smuggled Iranian women and
girls, gave them fake passports, and transported them to European and
Persian Gulf countries. In one case, a 16-year-old girl was smuggled to
Turkey, and then sold to a 58-year-old European national for $20,000.
In the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, local police report
that girls are being sold to Pakistani men as sex-slaves. The Pakistani
men marry the girls, ranging in age from 12 to 20, and then sell them to
brothels called "Kharabat" in Pakistan. One network was caught
contacting poor families around Mashad and offering to marry girls. The
girls were then taken through Afghanistan to Pakistan where they were
sold to brothels.
In the southeastern border province of Sistan Baluchestan, thousands of
Iranian girls reportedly have been sold to Afghani men. Their final
destinations are unknown. One factor contributing to the increase in
prostitution and the sex slave trade is the number of teen girls who are
running away from home. The girls are rebelling against fundamentalist
imposed restrictions on their freedom, domestic abuse, and parental drug
addictions. Unfortunately, in their flight to freedom, the girls find
more abuse and exploitation. Ninety percent of girls who run away from
home will end up in prostitution. As a result of runaways, in Tehran
alone there are an estimated 25,000 street children, most of them girls.
Pimps prey upon street children, runaways, and vulnerable high school
girls in city parks. In one case, a woman was discovered selling Iranian
girls to men in Persian Gulf countries; for four years, she had hunted
down runaway girls and sold them. She even sold her own daughter for
US$11,000.
Given the totalitarian rule in Iran, most organized activities are known
to the authorities. The exposure of sex slave networks in Iran has shown
that many mullahs and officials are involved in the sexual exploitation
and trade of women and girls. Women report that in order to have a judge
approve a divorce they have to have sex with him. Women who are arrested
for prostitution say they must have sex with the arresting officer.
There are reports of police locating young women for sex for the wealthy
and powerful mullahs.
In cities, shelters have been set-up to provide assistance for runaways.
Officials who run these shelters are often corrupt; they run
prostitution rings using the girls from the shelter. For example in
Karaj, the former head of a Revolutionary Tribunal and seven other
senior officials were arrested in connection with a prostitution ring
that used 12 to 18 year old girls from a shelter called the Center of
Islamic Orientation.
Other instances of corruption abound. There was a judge in Karaj who was
involved in a network that identified young girls to be sold abroad. And
in Qom, the center for religious training in Iran, when a prostitution
ring was broken up, some of the people arrested were from government
agencies, including the Department of Justice. The ruling
fundamentalists have differing opinions on their official position on
the sex trade: deny and hide it or recognize and accommodate it. In
2002, a BBC journalist was deported for taking photographs of
prostitutes. Officials told her: "We are deporting you because you
have taken pictures of prostitutes. This is not a true reflection of
life in our Islamic Republic. We don't have prostitutes." Yet, earlier
the same year, officials of the Social Department of the Interior
Ministry suggested legalizing prostitution as a way to manage it and
control the spread of HIV. They proposed setting-up brothels, called
"morality houses," and using the traditional religious custom of
temporary marriage, in which a couple can marry for a short period of
time, even an hour, to facilitate prostitution. Islamic fundamentalists
ideology and practices are adaptable when it comes to controlling and
using women.
Some may think a thriving sex trade in a theocracy with clerics acting
as pimps is a contradiction in a country founded and ruled by Islamic
fundamentalists. In fact, this is not a contradiction. First,
exploitation and repression of women are closely associated. Both exist
where women, individually or collectively, are denied freedom and
rights. Second, the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran are not simply
conservative Muslims. Islamic fundamentalism is a political movement
with a political ideology that considers women inherently inferior in
intellectual and moral capacity. Fundamentalists hate women's minds and
bodies. Selling women nd girls for prostitution is just the
dehumanizing complement to forcing women and girls to cover their bodies
and hair with the veil.
In a religious dictatorship like Iran, one cannot appeal to the rule of
law for justice for women and girls. Women and girls have no guarantees
of freedom and rights, and no expectation of respect or dignity from the
Islamic fundamentalists. Only the end of the Iranian regime will free
women and girls from all the forms of slavery they suffer.
The author wishes to acknowledge the Iranian human rights and
pro-democracy activists who contributed information for this article. If
any readers have information on prostitution and the sex slave trade in
Iran, please contact me at dhughes@uri.edu
Dr. Donna M. Hughes is a Professor and holds the
Carlson Endowed Chair in Women's Studies at the
University of Rhode Island
Read more at:
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/
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